THE CHASE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: THE CHASE is satire of chase films
that takes some funny knocks at TV-news, but otherwise
offers little. The film works neither as an action film
nor as a comedy. THE CHASE manages to drag even at a short
87 minutes. Rating: low 0 (-4 to +4).
Adam Rifkin is back in the driver seat for his third film. Rifkin directed the film NEVER ON TUESDAY (which I'm sorry I haven't seen) and the surrealist comedy THE DARK BACKWARD (which I'm sorry I did see). He is back with THE CHASE. Rifkin's talent is improving at high speed--faster, in fact, then the chase in THE CHASE. His latest does not have an incredibly greasy-looking Judd Nelson with a third arm growing out of his back and does not leave the audience with something akin to flu symptoms. So Rifkin is showing real signs of improvement. Just not enough.
The plot of THE CHASE is little more than the title might suggest. Charlie Sheen plays Jack Hammond, a man running from the police but spotted by them at a convenience store. To escape he takes as hostage Natalie Voss (played by Kristy Swanson) and flees only to be chased by the law and several live-tv-news teams all the way to the Mexican border. Along the way he gets to know his hostage who turns out to be the daughter of the "Californian Donald Trump," Dalton Voss (Ray Wise). Some of the film's satirical edge, in fact most of what works, is aimed at the news team and the absurd risks they take for ratings, chasing along with--and often ahead of--the police anxious to beat the competition to a story.
This film is appears to want to be a madcap satire of a particular type of film, much as AIRPLANE was for a different sub-genre, but in this case neither the humor nor the action carries film. The humor is all on a fairly lukewarm level that is sometimes helped but more often hindered by Sheen's deadpan serious delivery. There are chuckles, but they are often miles apart. The action scenes are often mechanical and punctuated with overly familiar-looking stunt crashes. The premise seems to be that we are watching a high-speed chase, but we never get much of a sense of speed. We see the two leads talking with the rear-projection showing the police cars following them, but you rarely have the feel that the speed gets over the speed limit. Sheen is just not attentive enough to the road and the scenery does not seem to go by all that fast. That may seem like a picayune point, but it gets in the way of the storytelling. We do see some of the requisite explosions and carnage--both fairly mechanical--but it doesn't seem clear exactly why for the speeds shown.
Sheen's acting is flat and dry throughout in a film in which there was little real acting required. Kristy Swanson, who played the title roles in DEADLY FRIEND and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER competes with Sheen to see who can more underplay a role. Trying his hand at acting is rock musician Henry Rollins as one of the pursuing policemen who seems more interested in impressing an interviewer riding along with him than in actually capturing Hammond.
This is a comedy whose engine seems unwilling to turn over and which never manages to get all its sparkplugs to fire. I give it a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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leeper@mtgzfs3.att.com
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